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Comment by willturman | Hacker News Reader

> But where fans are really getting taken for a ride is in the parking lot.

Parking isn't necessary to see a baseball game at 90% of these venues, and shouldn't be included. Including parking in these comparisons at all demonstrates a lack of understanding of population density and transportation trends over the past 50 years in any city large enough to support a major league baseball franchise. We need to lose this expectation that you just drive your mini-van within 200 feet of any venue with something you want to see.

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This is totally out of touch with reality. Parking is absolutely necessary at 90% of these venues for a family.

Transportation trends in the last 50 years have simply gotten more and more car dependent. Do you live in the US, or are you talking about somewhere else? Do you have children?

Just anecdotally the nearby baseball parks are all well-served by trains in ways that they certainly were not 50 years ago. BART did not exist 50 years ago, now it serves (directly) the Oakland A's and within walking distance the SF Giants. Neither Amtrak Capitol Corridor nor Caltrain existed 50 years ago, now Capitol Corridor serves the Oakland A's directly and Caltrain serves the SF Giants directly.

Increasing car dependence in the last 50 years is not a trend I am personally observing.

With a family it's often much cheaper to drive the car even if you overpay for parking.

Heckles, even in San Diego, where the trolley runs right into the stadium basically, you'd pay $5 per person round-trip, so you only need a family size of 3 to cost as much as the cheaper garages, 4 would match the "preferred" ones. Doesn't cost in gas, but you may be driving to the other end of the trolley anyway.

Superficially cheaper, perhaps, but depends on your values. My children greatly prefer the train to the car, because riding the train is family time and riding in the car is a chore. Even if biking down to the BART station, parking your bike, and taking BART to SF then walking a mile to the Giants game sounds like a massive drag when you put it that way, they think it's a good time.

Yeah, once kids can walk on their own, transit can be more "fun" - there are many variables beyond simple "out of pocket cash".

I do wish more transit systems had "kids ride free" deals.

In the chart, the 3 most expensive are the Red Sox, Cubs and Yankees. All 3 of them have excellent public transit to the stadiums.

I have the most experience with the Cubs. Children under 7 are free to ride public transit in Chicago, and children under 11 are de-facto free - they qualify for half-price fare and transit workers would rather wave them through than do the work make the card scanner charge the correct amount. Public school students can get a transit card that lets them ride for free anyway. And (pre-pandemic) if you rode public transit to/from work it was always cheaper to get the monthly pass so riding to/from the game had a $0.00 marginal cost. In effect, parking was only something that applied to people from the suburbs.

> All 3 of them have excellent public transit to the stadiums.

IF your family lives somewhere that is also served by that transit. Most of the stadiums listed are not served by transit that is reasonably accessible to where families tend to live.

> parking was only something that applied to people from the suburbs.

Exactly. That place with all the families.

> IF your family lives somewhere that is also served by that transit

Well, that's not the fault of the baseball team.

> Most of the stadiums listed are not served by transit that is reasonably accessible to where families tend to live.

This is definitely the fault of the baseball team. Look at Atlanta, for example. They moved from reasonably close to downtown to way out in the middle of nowhere, just to get away from the city. What about the other sports teams in Atlanta? Oh, a brand new dome right next to the train station? Hmm...

I’m not blaming the baseball team? Unsure where that comment came from.

The article, and my response, is just acknowledging reality that things have gotten more expensive including parking, and that mostly people still drive to these sorts of venues.

Most people still drive to the new Atlanta dome. And Turner Fiekd had effectively 0 public transit prior to that move anyway unless you count a singular temporary bus shuttle route, as did Fulton Co before that. You have never been able to take public transit to a Braves game.

Park and ride lots exist exactly to facilitate suburban access to urban centers via public transportation. Most of these lots are free. Parking in a city is a luxury, and is not necessary for access to urban entertainment venues.

Again, not true for loads of places. Most American cities are hugely dependent on cars as the primary source of transportation.

That's obvious. It's also not necessary to drive to the stadium to see a baseball game in the 30 American cities that support Major League Baseball Teams with the exception of Atlanta, Dallas (Texas), Anaheim, and Kansas City, of which, only Atlanta has built a stadium in the past 25 years.

Driving to a venue to park your personal metal box in the populated city centers where 85+% of MLB stadiums exist is a luxury, and is not an expectation that can be extrapolated to an average attendee of a Major League Baseball game.

As mentioned by a different commenter above, I wouldn't even think to drive to Fenway. Or to games in San Francisco, Oakland, New York, Seattle, San Diego, Washington, and on and on.

> is a luxury, and is not an expectation that can be extrapolated to an average attendee of a Major League Baseball game

This is exactly what the article is about. It used to be a normal thing for normal families to do, but the prices have gone up significantly.

You wouldn't drive to Oakland? Why? It's quite literally a stadium surrounded by parking https://www.google.com/maps/place/RingCentral+Coliseum/@37.7...

Stadiums used to be on the outskirts of cities surrounded by huge parking lots. Candlestick, Qualcomm, Kingdome, Astrodome, among many others. These stadiums have been replaced by modern venues in the hearts of American cities and emphasize public transportation access and walkability to surrounding shopping and entertainment districts. Expecting to drive a car into the heart of a city and not pay exorbitant prices for parking is absurd. [1]

I wouldn't drive to the Oakland Coliseum because it literally has a dedicated BART stop accessible by everywhere else in the Bay Area.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking

Qualcomm had a trolley station right up against it, before the stadium was torn down. But the city had expanded to surround the stadium.

Children 12 and under ride the trolley to PetCo for free from free Park and Ride lots. Trolley fares are discounted to $2.50 round trip for youth (12-18), seniors, and disabled riders.

https://www.mlb.com/padres/ballpark/transportation/public-tr...

> Increasing car dependence in the last 50 years is not a trend I am personally observing.

You’re just not looking then. You mention the Giants and the A’s but conveniently leave out the 49ers.

The vast majority of families in the US do not live anywhere near public transit like Bart of Caltrain. I appreciate that they’ve been built, but far more roads and highways have been built over that same timeframe.

The 49ers moved from the almost completely car-only Candlestick to a new stadium in Santa Clara that is served directly by Capitol Corridor and ACE trains and has its own VTA streetcar station and is accessed by the San Tomas Aquino Creek and Guadalupe River bike and pedestrian trails. The trend over the last 50 years is clearly away from car dependence.

> The trend over the last 50 years is clearly away from car dependence.

It’s just…not. I don’t know how else to state it. Maybe it is for you. Maybe it is for the Bay Area. But nationwide it’s just simply not.

>The trend over the last 50 years is clearly away from car dependence.

Uh... no. The few streetcars and bike trails built are drowned out by the massive growth in suburbs and people living even further away from city centers (or these stadiums).

Your trend comparison is leaving out the majority of the picture.

Perhaps the 49ers were left out because the article references the cost to attend a baseball game, whose league (MLB) requires a team to host 81 home games per season which requires much greater consideration for public transportation than the 8 home games hosted each year by professional football teams.

I dunno about "90%" but I wouldn't drive to Fenway Park, even if it parking was free and plentiful. Hell, not even if you paid me. I'll take the T or I'll stay home.

People who would go to baseball games live far away from the stadium and would prefer to not walk or bike miles and miles to get there, and American public transit and biking infrastructure generally suck. Parking within 1000 feet of a venue is an expectation for most events and attendees.

To be fair buying 4 round trip tickets on most transit isn’t going to be very cheap either.

Children 11 and under ride for free on the MBTA in Boston, and there are discounts for middle and high-school students. A round-trip ticket for an adult is $4.80 - $2.40 each way.

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